Pride Month – Tennessee Williams & The Glass Menagerie

by jeanineoloughlin

June is LGBT Pride Month so let’s take some time to appreciate authors of the community and their great works.

Tennessee Williams 3/26/11 – 2/25/83

An American playwright and author best known for his works The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Orpheus Descending and Sweet Bird of Youth. Many of his pieces were adapted to film and in 1979 he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

The Glass Menagerie premiered in Chicago in 1944 and reached critical fame that eventually launched the play onto Broadway where it won New York Drama Critics Circle Award in 1945. The play centers around Tom Wingfield’s memory of his mother Amanda and his sister Laura who suffered from a limp caused by a bout of polio. With a small cast and an interesting, and a twist at the end of the play makes for a play that many say reflected his own unhappy background. The play would later become a film in 1950; directed by Irving Rapper and staring Gertrude Lawrence, Jane Wyman, Kirk Douglas, and Arthur Kennedy as protagonist Tom Wingfield to mixed reviews.